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Psychology Of Facebook Essay

Below is an essay on "Psychology Of Facebook" from Anti Essays, your source for research papers, essays, and term paper examples.

Love it or loathe it, Facebook is everywhere, and will continue to be everywhere as the film describing its genesis—The Social Network—is released worldwide over coming months.

To help you cope, here are 7 research-based tips for total Facebook domination. If you don't use it, these should at least help you pepper Facebook-related conversations with compelling observations from the psychological research.

1. Get between 100 and 300 friends

It doesn't look good to have too many Facebook friends, or too few.

It has been suggested that humans can maintain relationships with 150 people and Tong et al. (2008) found Facebooker's social attractiveness peaked at around this number. Go much above 300 or below 100 and social attractiveness starts to drop.

2. Court attractive friends

Make sure your friends, or the people who post on your 'wall', are good-looking. Walther et al. (2008) found that attractive friends boosted the perceived attractiveness of participant's profiles.

Keep the uggos away, unlike the offline world, it won't make you look better in comparison.

3. Understand the 7 motivations

If you need to lure more people in as Facebook friends, it's handy to understand its attraction.

Joinson (2008) found 7 basic motivations for using Facebook: connecting with old or distant friends, social surveillance (see what old friends are up to, but without talking to them), looking up people met offline, virtual people watching, status updating and content.

4. Don't let your partner use Facebook

Muise et al. (2009) found that participants who spent more time on Facebook were more jealous of their partners. This is probably because they are finding out things about their partner—who they know and where they've been—which, in the days before social networking, could have been kept quiet.

So, don't let your partner see your Facebook profile. Unless you want them to be jealous. In which case, carry on.